Alexandra E. Petri

It was mid-April and she had just completed a run-through of what to do when the priest pours the Holy Water on her head later in the month.

Fifty or so other Chinese catechumens — people who are joining the Catholic faith — accompanied by their sponsors, satin the pews around her, listening to the instructions delivered from the altar.

This was their only rehearsal for the Easter Vigil.

“I think I might screw up,” she said in a low whisper. “I just hope I do well.”

Across the country each year, more than 30,000 people officially join the Catholic Church on Easter Eve — a tradition that dates to the early days of the church — by participating in the sacraments of initiation: baptism, holy communion and confirmation.

Of the 500 or so converting in New York this weekend, about a third are Chinese immigrants, some of whom are seeking asylum based on religious persecution in China. Most of the Chinese immigrants in New York City live in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and they are having a transformative effect on local Catholic churches.

State control over religion remains strong in China, which has been known to monitor churches threateningly, if not raze some of them entirely, while harassing and sometimes imprisoning pastors and priests. Christians in particular faced severe persecution in 2018, the worst registered in 40 years, according to an annual report by ChinaAid, a Christian nonprofit.

That said, religion is on the rise in China. Tens of millions now identify as Christians. Protestantism has swelled to what some believe to be as many as 115 million adherents, while Catholics represent a smaller group, with about 10 million.

These numbers have trickled down to immigrant communities in New York.

“As more and more Chinese immigrants come to America, we see our parish get bigger each year,” said Sister Monica Gan, who runs the initiations at St. John Vianney. The process, developed by the Catholic Church, teaches the tenets of Christianity and Catholicism to those who want to convert, like Chen.

In the early 1990s in Brooklyn, the Rev. Norman Bennett, then a priest at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in Sunset Park, recognized an opportunity to connect with Chinese immigrants who were steadily moving into the neighborhood. At the time, the majority of immigrants were Cantonese speakers, so Bennett started studying the language. It was the Sunday after Christmas, in 1995, when Bennett delivered Brooklyn’s first Mass in Chinese. About 25 people showed up.

“I was very nervous and overwhelmed,” Bennett recalled. “My pronunciation wasn’t that good, and I was barely able to get through it all.”

Now, more than two decades later, at least four churches in Brooklyn offer Mandarin and/or Cantonese services. Three of those offer Christian initiation programs in Mandarin. Our Lady of Perpetual Help has seen the greatest increase in those converting to Catholicism, with a nearly 160% jump in five years, according to records from the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Local churches are simply adjusting to changing demographics, said the Rev. Thomas Gaunt, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, an independent research group that studies the Catholic Church. “In neighborhoods like Brooklyn, people leave, but churches don’t,” he said. “Parishes there are trying to respond to the needs of the community.”

Churches in Queens are adapting in a similar way. After years without a religious home, Chinese Catholics in the Flushing area settled at St. John Vianney in 2006. Now, daily Masses are celebrated there in Mandarin, with a Sunday morning Mass that is celebrated in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Five Christian initiation classes, taught in Mandarin, take place every week.

Chen made the decision to convert in fall, after a friend persuaded her to attend Mass. Born in Fujian province and now a permanent resident, Chen moved to Flushing 10 years ago, when she was 14. She wasn’t raised in a religious household, and she didn’t know what to expect.

Together, they went to St. John Vianney. “I never felt like that before,” Chen said. “I just started to believe that God really does exist.”

Many of Chen’s classmates, however, particularly those who are recent arrivals from China, did not have such an open and accepting experience practicing Catholicism before starting the Christian initiation program in Queens. They described repressed lives in China, often spent in the shadows and attending underground churches, keeping their faith a secret to all but a select few.

Catherine Zhang came to the United States about a year ago from the Henan province with her husband, Simon, to seek asylum, claiming religious persecution. Zhang, who spoke through a translator, said she had been arrested in 2017 and held in police detention for participating in an “illegal religious activity,” what she described as a prayer and Bible study group.

On Easter Eve, the Zhangs will undergo the sacraments of initiation.

“Spiritually speaking, I am free,” Catherine Zhang said. “I am obtaining spiritual growth, and it is definitely worth it.”

This past summer, an immigrant named Daniel, who asked that his last name not be used for legal reasons and also spoke through a translator, started to take Christian initiation classes at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn, when he wasn’t working as a dishwasher in a restaurant.

He came to the country illegally, saying his “religious situation” in China threatened his mental health and strained his economic livelihood.

But stories like Daniel’s and Zhang’s led to a sweeping investigation by federal officials that, in 2012, resulted in charges against at least 30 people of running an asylum mill in Flushing and in Chinatown. The mill coached clients to make up stories about religious persecution, among other fabricated claims, in order to win asylum. The cases of13,500 immigrants, many of whom are Chinese, are under review, with threat of deportation.

“There is no evidence that recent Chinese Catholics in our diocese are not true believers and are just turning to us to help support their asylum applications,” said Adriana Rodriguez, of the Diocese of Brooklyn. “The Catholic Church has an extensive period of initiation and commitment,” she continued, arguing that those interested in immigration status only could opt for a “Christian church with a shorter period of conversion.”

Daniel, who is seeking asylum, seems to have no problem with the lengthy process, along with its rituals. Though he was raised Catholic, he was never baptized. His baptism Saturday marks more than just his official entry to the church; it symbolizes a new chapter.

“I wanted to start a new life here,” he said, “and by being baptized, I will be reborn.”

Local churches adapt to surge of Chinese converts

NEW YORK — Catherine Chen was sitting in a pew at St. John Vianney Roman Catholic Church in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, practicing.

<h1>NEW YORK — Maeen Ali remembers the worry he felt when he first spotted the “Punish a Muslim Day” screed online.</h1>

The letter, mailed last spring throughout England, encouraged violence that ranged from pulling off a woman’s head scarf to bombing mosques. Each attack, the letter instructed, would be rewarded with points. The hate campaign prompted the police in New York and other big cities to expand patrols around mosques and Islamic centers on the specified day.

Ali, who lives in Downtown Brooklyn, said he was consumed by thoughts of his four children’s safety.

“That just boiled inside of me,” said Ali, 38, who moved to the United States from Yemen in 1990. “That’s when I said to myself that it was really important to come out and protect Muslims in the community.”

He added, “I have to stand up.”

As it turns out, he will spend most of his time sitting — in a white Ford Taurus that is detailed to look like a police squad car with red and white emergency lights.

Ali is among the first 30 members of the all-volunteer Muslim Community Patrol &amp; Services that is preparing to operate in neighborhoods in Brooklyn, with a goal of growing its fleet of two cars to five by the end of the month and eventually expanding citywide. The group recently held a training led by off-duty officers from the Police Department’s 72nd Precinct.

“It’s like a neighborhood watch but on steroids,” said Noor Rabah, the group’s 31-year-old vice president who lives in Sunset Park.

As word of the new patrol has begun to spread, the backlash has been swift, even among some members of the Muslim community who have criticized the lack of information, and even questioned the need for the patrol.

Like the Shomrim that patrols largely Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Asian Safety Patrol that operates mainly in Sunset Park, the new group — believed to be the first of its kind in the country — hopes to function as extra sets of eyes and ears for the police.

The unarmed civilian patrol will offer translation services — its members are fluent in any of seven languages — explain cultural nuances, report suspicious activity, respond to traffic accidents and even help in searches for the missing. The patrol has the support of Brooklyn’s borough president, Eric L. Adams, and Assistant Chief Brian J. Conroy, the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South.

“More than buildings went down in 9/11. Trust between communities went down,” Adams said. “We are building it back one brick at a time, and this patrol is one of those bricks.”

Leaders said the group is self-funded and used donations to purchase the cars and navy blue uniforms for its members, many of whom are involved with the Muslim Community Center in Sunset Park.

Volunteers plan to work in shifts, watching over arrival and dismissal times at three Islamic schools in Brooklyn and conducting patrols from 5 to 11 p.m., mostly near mosques and bus and subway stops in Bay Ridge and Sunset Park, where there are large Muslim populations. It will also link residents to food pantries, mentorship programs and counseling services. It aims to serve anyone who needs help, Rabah said, not just Muslims.

“Presence is prevention,” Rabah said. “Just us being around should deter the average criminal mind of doing something to harm another person.”

But in a world where far-right conspiracy theories have inspired terror plots against an Islamic enclave in upstate New York, and a travel ban has blocked residents of predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, nothing, it seems, is that simple.

Organizers said they were prepared for skeptics.

But they did not expect the vitriol unleashed when a photo of their new, double-parked patrol cars on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge turned up Dec. 21 on Facebook, and later on Instagram. The hostility spread after a far-right Canadian website, Rebel Media, posted a snippet on YouTube. The ugly online comments included accusations that the group was a stalking horse for Shariah law, and worse.

“I expected some sort of, ‘Wait, what is that?’ but not, ‘Wait, what the hell is that?’ Rabah said. “There’s a big difference.”

Some in the Muslim community were equally startled, but for a different reason: The cars’ resemblance to New York City police cruisers stoked anxieties rather than allayed them.

Somia Elrowmeim, the adult education and women’s empowerment manager at the Arab American Association of New York, based in Bay Ridge, said a single misstep from the patrol could reflect poorly on the city’s entire Muslim community. She said more outreach to community leaders was essential before patrols began operating.

Until then, Elrowmeim, 34, offered this message: “We don’t want you near our community.”

The 68th Precinct, serving Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, fielded a flurry of calls from concerned residents after the social media posts, leading police officials to hold an introductory meeting with Muslim Community Patrol members to discuss parameters: Call 911 if they encounter something suspicious, and take no enforcement action on their own. “We expect them to follow the law in general,” a Police Department spokesman said.

No date has been finalized for the start of patrols, Rabah said. Before the rollout, members will attend community board meetings to explain the patrol’s mission and to answer questions from residents. On Friday, the group met with members of the influential Arab American Association of New York, whose vice president, Habib Joudeh, had said he was not told about the patrol group until after the backlash prompted by the photo of the car.

“You have to inform people of what’s going on first,” Joudeh said.

Unlike the Shomrim, which patrols in vehicles and on foot, the Muslim patrol will operate only from patrol cars, Rabah said.

“We know our place: We are not cops,” he said. “We are simply patrollers for the community that also

Community patrols work in concert with the police, but are not sanctioned or regulated by the Police Department. “Safety is a shared responsibility with the community, so this is an opportunity for the community to help out and work together with the police,” Conroy said in an interview.

Rabah, a funeral organizer for the Janazah Project, said the Muslim Community Patrol had been a long-held dream of his and others. A series of sensational 2016 attacks, including the murder of an imam and his assistant in Queens and an arson attack on a Muslim woman dressed in traditional garb in Manhattan, gave energy to their cause, he said.

New York City is home to an estimated 769,000 Muslims. They make up about 9 percent of the city’s population, but represent 22 percent of all Muslims living in the United States, according to Muslims for American Progress.

In 2017 in the city, there were 14 reported anti-Muslim bias incidents, according to the Police Department’s annual report. Last year, there were 14 bias-crime incidents recorded against Muslims during the first three quarters of the year, the most recent data available.

Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said the actual number of hate crimes is likely much higher, since bias attacks often go unreported. Still, she said she saw the community patrol as more than just a response to discrimination and attacks against Muslims; it was also reflective of a desire to participate and engage with society in deep, meaningful ways.

“Muslims in general have had an awakening,” Nasher said. “We see this movement across the board in which Muslims are thinking more conscientiously about how to give back.”

In 1988, a group of men from a Brooklyn mosque conducted foot patrols in Bedford-Stuyvesant in an effort to rid the community of crime and drugs, specifically crack cocaine. But CAIR officials said they believed the new Muslim patrol is the only group of its kind in the nation.

Huda Quhshi, the owner of Le’Jemalik Salon &amp; Boutique in Bay Ridge, said she felt a “spark of happiness” when she saw a video of the patrol car on Instagram. The extra protection is welcome, she said, especially for women who wear hijabs — “walking billboards of a Muslim” — and are particularly vulnerable to harassment.

Quhshi, a 39-year-old native of Brooklyn who now lives in Queens, said she has not had problems while wearing a hijab, but her teenage daughter has.

“With everything going on, you sort of feel like the whole world is against Muslims,” she said. “So it feels good to know that there is someone there, watching out.”

Ali, who helped found Mercy Bakery, a nonprofit that runs bakeries and provides free loaves of bread to families in need, stressed that the goal was to serve the entire community, not only Muslims.

“I hope people just give us a chance,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="9e47eb88-0e34-499e-8362-786de9e65810" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/nyregion/muslim-community-patrol-brooklyn.html">The New York Times</a>.

Muslims Form Community Patrol. Some Neighbors Say No Thanks.

The letter, mailed last spring throughout England, encouraged violence that ranged from pulling off a woman’s head scarf to bombing mosques.

Muslims form community patrol, some neighbors say no thanks

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Alexandra E. Petri

Articles written by the author

Local churches adapt to surge of Chinese converts

Muslims form community patrol, some neighbors say no thanks